The same musty smell as before.
Ming Rao concluded from this that they were still in the warehouse, surrounded by rusted iron walls, the door tightly sealed.
He heard his own voice echoing in the damp air. He’d never felt so talkative before the moment he opened his mouth, a torrent of words came tumbling out in an endless stream.
“Y-you can’t do this, this is against the law. My parents won’t let you get away with it, and neither will my brother! You have a girlfriend too if you do anything to me, you won’t be whole anymore. You love your girlfriend so much, how could you not stay faithful to her?”
“I know you’re not bad at heart, it’s just the d-drugs controlling you. You have to fight it, you can’t give in. Think about your bright future, don’t keep making mistake after mistake!!”
Yan Yuchuan turned a deaf ear, opening Ming Rao’s camera bag with such practiced ease and such unruffled composure that Ming Rao felt Lu Feiyang hadn’t been wrong at all calling him a thief at the school gate that day.
After setting up the tripod, he stacked a few boxes to place the fill light on, found the right angle, and walked over to Ming Rao with perfect calm.
Yan Yuchuan’s gaze was almost tangible, like a very dull blade slowly scraping across every inch of Ming Rao’s skin.
Even though Yan Yuchuan was the one wearing less, Ming Rao felt like he was the one being violated by this man before him, with that mocking, contemptuous, condescending look in his eyes.
He couldn’t say a word, lips pressed tightly together, face red as an overripe tomato.
What was even more despairing was that from this angle, he could feel with absolute clarity the presence of Yan Yuchuan’s arousal, radiating a dangerous, oppressive pressure without any pretense of concealment.
And his first reaction was: the size difference between them was bigger than he’d imagined.
He had to admit, Ming Rao’s pride as a male creature had suffered a certain degree of damage.
But then he thought did that even matter anymore?
Something that would damage his pride far more was about to happen!
He was going to be filmed. with his own camera and maybe even passed around by some perverted bald old men.
AHHHHHHHHHHH! Ming Rao was about to lose his mind.
Having set up the lighting and camera, Yan Yuchuan remained motionless for a long while, looking down at Ming Rao’s camera as if searching for something.
Until Ming Rao heard the camera emit a sound.
“Baby, today you turn eighteen! Mom wishes you a happy eighteenth birthday. May your future life be smooth and peaceful, may there always be someone who loves you. Mom looks forward to witnessing more of life’s important moments with you.”
Yan Yuchuan let out a scoff, repeating the word slowly with an unreadable tone: “Baby.”
Ming Rao’s face flushed crimson with shame and fury, his words coming out in a jumble: “S-stop that, you turn it off.”
The video was nearly a minute long. Just as Ming Rao was relieved that this prolonged torment was finally over, an affectionate “baby” sounded again this time with a different audio quality, playing from a phone.
Yan Yuchuan had transferred the video to his phone, and in the blink of an eye, the camera was back securely on the tripod.
“Does Mom know what her baby looks like right now?”
Ming Rao screamed at the top of his lungs: “WHAT THE HELL DO YOU WANT?!”
“Your life’s important moments. I don’t want your mother to miss them.”
Ming Rao glared with gritted teeth: “Y-you sick freak!!”
He felt he’d completely misjudged Yan Yuchuan. This man had been putting on such a righteous, upright act earlier, but inside he was a beast in human clothing, more twisted than anyone!
Pressing the record button, Yan Yuchuan slowly walked over to Ming Rao, bent his knee, and crouched down in front of him.
The moment he felt Yan Yuchuan’s approach, Ming Rao’s whole body went numb like an electric shock. His stomach churned violently from nerves, a tearing pain shooting through him, and he could only beg through tears: “Please, no, I don’t feel well, my stomach hurts so much.”
Yan Yuchuan reached out toward him. “Didn’t have a stomachache when you had someone strip my clothes off earlier?”
“I-it hurt then too. I… AHHHHHH”
Ming Rao squeezed his eyes shut, all reason gone, reduced to nothing but babbling nonsense and screaming bloody murder, his cries so piercing they threatened to bring the roof down.
Then, after one particularly agonizing shriek, his head lolled to the side, and he went still.
The screaming stopped abruptly, and the world in the dead of night seemed to have a pause button slammed down on it.
Perhaps the silence came too suddenly, because Yan Yuchuan also stopped what he was doing.
He pinched Ming Rao’s chin between two fingers. “Hey.”
Ming Rao’s head was limp, moving limply under his touch.
Yan Yuchuan’s brow furrowed. He patted Ming Rao’s face. No reaction.
“Playing dead won’t work. It’ll only make things more interesting.”
Still no reaction.
Yan Yuchuan leaned in close. Ming Rao’s lips were deathly pale, two pitiful tear tracks dried at the corners of his eyes.
The way he looked now, he really was no different from a corpse.
Yan Yuchuan touched his forehead. It was burning hot.
The spray Lu Feiyang had dosed him with was truly bizarre in its effects it came in waves, and just when it seemed to have subsided, it surged back with renewed ferocity. Yan Yuchuan couldn’t withstand it, so he went off to the side to hastily relieve himself, then dressed and collapsed onto the floor, utterly spent.
After resting for a moment, he dragged his weary steps over to Ming Rao’s side, crouched down, and studied his face carefully.
His skin was pale as snow, so thin that the veins were nearly visible beneath it. Fine strands of bangs fell across his eyes, brushing against his curled, upturned lashes.
Even with no trace of color in his face and illness written all over him, one thing remained undeniable: this was an extraordinarily beautiful face.
Yan Yuchuan couldn’t help but think that if he actually filmed something with this guy, it would probably fetch a very good price.
He let out a cold laugh, draped Ming Rao’s arm over his own shoulder, and with a forceful thrust of his waist, hoisted him onto his back.
Ming Rao had a slim, slender build, but he was still a grown man. Yan Yuchuan had already been running on empty after a full day of working at the bar, getting drugged, stripped, and brawling with people. By the time he came down from the second floor of the warehouse, his legs were already trembling. He stumbled along for several li before finally spotting a clinic.
As soon as he got close, a pungent smell hit him in the face. Yan Yuchuan looked at the cotton swabs and tissues strewn everywhere and seriously questioned whether this clinic was even legitimate, but he couldn’t afford to be picky.
He asked the doctor at the registration desk for medicine for acute gastroenteritis. The other party tossed him a box without even lifting his head and quoted a price.
Yan Yuchuan fell silent upon hearing it. The words “Can you make it cheaper” only made it past the first three syllables before dissolving into a resigned “Forget it.” He turned and walked away.
He rented a room in a walk-up apartment building three kilometers from Port Harbor University, on the sixth floor, with no elevator. He’d barely reached the bottom of the building when Lin Zhihao and Lin Zhimiao spotted him, shot up from where they were sitting, and came flying down to greet him.
“Chuan-ge! You’re finally back!!”
Lin Zhihao was the first to see him. Noticing that he was carrying a motionless person on his back, his eyes behind his glasses narrowed, then flew wide open in shock. He bellowed at the top of his lungs: “Holy shit, Chuan-ge, did you kill someone?!”
Yan Yuchuan silently resolved that if he ever actually killed someone, Lin Zhihao would be the absolute last person to find out. “Move aside first, let me get the door.”
The low-rent apartment was pitifully small less than twenty square meters in total. Aside from a shabby fabric sofa, it held only a bed and a table. They’d just moved in yesterday and done a cleaning, and the smell of disinfectant still lingered stubbornly in the air.
Yan Yuchuan laid Ming Rao down on the bed. Lin Zhihao sat on the sofa and spoke up: “Zhimiao told me everything. They’re absolutely lawless daring to do something like that in broad daylight.”
Yan Yuchuan said quietly, “Surprised?”
As he spoke, he went to the bathroom, wet the only towel in the entire room, and placed it on Ming Rao’s forehead.
“Not really surprised,” Lin Zhihao said, his face clouded with worry. “Sigh, what are we going to do? Do you think they’ll come looking for trouble again?”
“Probably,” Yan Yuchuan said, sitting down by the bed. “We’ve probably made enemies of them now.”
The worry on Lin Zhihao’s face deepened. Just then, Ming Rao turned over in his sleep. Lin Zhihao heard the sound, took a good look at him, and shot to his feet.
“Chuan-ge, th-th-this, this is the guy from the school gate? Was he there tonight too?! This bastard, this piece of shit, I’ll kill him!”
Yan Yuchuan raised an eyebrow. “How many people have you killed, that you say it so smoothly?”
“I well, he deserves to die anyway!”
Lin Zhimiao fiddled with the tassels on the sofa. “So the person you two ran into this afternoon was him? No way, I thought he was pretty nice.”
Her brother knew her inside and out and mercilessly called her out: “Pfft, you mean you thought he was pretty.”
“Being good-looking matters too, okay? And he helped me today.”
Lin Zhihao raised his hand and waved it in front of her glasses. “Lin Zhimiao, did you get scared stupid or something?”
Lin Zhimiao swatted his stinky paw away. “I’m being serious. He today… ugh, I can’t explain it to you anyway. But I really do think he was trying to help me. If it weren’t for him, I would’ve already”
She thought back to the upsetting incident, and her expression changed instantly. Lin Zhihao patted her back, not wanting her to relive it, and turned to Yan Yuchuan instead. “Chuan-ge, I get it now. You’re planning to use him as a hostage, right? Want me to go grab some rope and tie him up?”
Yan Yuchuan said calmly, “He’s in this state even without tying him up, he’s not going anywhere.”
“Then what’s your plan, bringing him back here?”
Yan Yuchuan was silent. He hadn’t actually thought that far. It was just a primal instinct pulling at him, when you see someone with a fever, you bring the fever down. After all, no matter how detestable someone is, they’re still a human life.
Lin Zhihao hesitated for a long moment before forcing the words out: “Chuan-ge, maybe we should just go back. Port Harbor really isn’t a place for people like us. We can’t get into the innovation camp, and now the bar won’t let us work either. We’re treated like rats in the gutter wherever we go. And the cost of living here is way too expensive. If we keep dragging this out, we won’t even be able to afford the ferry tickets back.”
After a long pause, Yan Yuchuan said quietly, “So we just give up like that?”
He couldn’t tell whether he was asking Lin Zhihao, himself, or any third party who might offer him guidance at this very moment.
“What else can we do? People have to accept their fate. We’re just not born with that kind of luck. Besides, you know how my dad is he’s been gambling more and more heavily these past few years. If we really left, with no one to keep an eye on him, I’m genuinely afraid he’d gamble everything away, even people…”
“Let me think of another way,” after a long silence, Yan Yuchuan let out a sigh, lifted his head, and spoke with the firmest tone he could muster.
Lin Zhimiao had been quite shaken today and was mentally exhausted; she’d already fallen asleep leaning against her brother. Yan Yuchuan said his goodbyes and returned alone to the tiny rented room, suddenly remembering he hadn’t eaten all day.
Ming Rao on the bed was restless, talking in his sleep, shouting “You’re molesting me!” and then mumbling “Mommy” in a clingy, slurred voice.
Yan Yuchuan glanced at him.
Nearly twenty years old, and when something happens, all he can do is cry for his mom pampered and fragile enough that a gust of wind could knock him over.
Truly like a delicate porcelain doll expensive to make, but shatters the moment it falls.
But so what? He was still born with everything Yan Yuchuan could never attain no matter how hard he struggled his whole life. There were still people who wept tears of joy over his turning eighteen an achievement that required nothing more than breathing.
And he could still, with a single command, trample another person into the ground.
Lin Zhihao had a point. Maybe Yan Yuchuan really was overreaching.
He was the one who’d pulled the Lin siblings into starting a business. He was the one who’d sworn he had confidence, that his project had real potential, that it was worth a shot. And in the end, he’d dragged Lin Zhimiao into suffering that kind of humiliation.
But,
Was he really going to give up just like that?
Yan Yuchuan didn’t know. Outside the window, Platinum Harbor was ablaze with lights, yet not a single one illuminated the path ahead of him.
“You still have a bright future.”
On the bed, Ming Rao turned over again, still muttering. His murmurs were soft, without logic, yet unexpectedly echoed and resonated with Yan Yuchuan’s current state of mind.
A bright future.
Yan Yuchuan gave a bitter smile, finding it nothing but ironic. In his most lost and helpless moment, the only encouragement he received was a sleep-talking ramble from someone who had just ground him into the dust.
He reached out and touched Ming Rao’s forehead, only to find his fever hadn’t gone down at all. His face was still flushed red no wonder he kept tossing and turning.
Ming Rao’s clothes had gotten soaked in the warehouse. Yan Yuchuan had taken them off and dressed him in his own clean clothes instead.
Yan Yuchuan counted the loose change in his bag, then got up and headed out.
The night wasn’t over yet. The nearest pharmacy to him hadn’t opened, and he walked quite a while before finding one that was open all night. He bought a box of stomach medicine and a box of fever reducers. On his way back, the supermarket downstairs had opened, so he grabbed a bag of eggs and some noodles on a whim.
When he reached the door of the rented room, he’d just pulled out his keys when the door opened on its own.
Ming Rao was wearing Yan Yuchuan’s khaki short-sleeved shirt, so loose it looked like a long robe, with the camera bag clutched against his chest.
The moment he saw Yan Yuchuan, he froze in fright, his round eyes blinking rapidly, looking exactly like a squirrel caught red-handed stealing nuts.